Conference Program

Regardless of what labels are put on them, every school in every society has pupils who do not adjust with the realities of the school and the education system. Educational support is a general response to this, as purposeful for equity in education. As such, it is moreover defined as key for sustainable education (Van der Branden, 2012; Bunar et al., 2021). According to the Swedish School Inspectorate (2024) and the Swedish Teachers’ Union (2024), most pupils are provided educational support when in need of it, but as many as a third are not. Based on field work comprising interviews with 118 educational professionals, pupils and their families, the present study contributes to both scholars and practitioners with a Foucauldian inquiry on power dynamics influencing the provision of educational support in the Swedish education system.

Holding provision of educational support as object of study, the object of knowledge is the power dynamics and processes involved in the provision. The empirical data consists of material gathered in three distinct data collections in nine Swedish municipalities and their corresponding LEAs and schools. An initial content analysis (Krippendorff, 2013: 355ff), of policy documents and plans on educational support, was followed by interviews with heads of LEA and principals in the same municipalities. Two lower secondary schools were thereafter entered for an extensive field work during three semesters, holding an ethnographic approach (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2019: 102f). It included observations of classes as well as other domains of everyday life at schools, and interviews with pupils, parents, teachers, special educators, and other school personnel.

The empirical data has been analysed informed by the theoretical realm of Foucault (1972/2002; 1980; 1988), making visible power dynamics involved in and influencing on the provision of educational support. A heavy accountability structure (Bergh, 2015) exerting ‘pressure from above’ on teachers and other school personnel, lead to problematising (Foucault, 1988: 257) school failures in ways that deflect responsibility from these and to the pupils and their families. Provision of educational support is moreover influenced by risks of being held accountable for school failure, making this a priority and reducing the priority of supporting pupils at par with their needs. Discourses and constructions of social change and of ‘Other’ families and pupils who ‘don’t give a damn’, become purposeful for school personnel experiencing time poverty, as to prioritise provision of educational support based on moralising judgements and medical diagnosis, instead of based on pupils’ needs. When such judgements are more prevalent regarding social groups already experiencing more vulnerable situations, the waiving of educational support compounds vulnerability, further distorting academic careers of the pupils and increasing educational inequalities.

In French-speaking Belgium, the educational system is transitioning from a segregated model for students with special educational needs towards a more inclusive one, notably through the 2018 decree on reasonable accommodations. Despite this reform, which aims to promote inclusion, specialized education pathways continue to see an overrepresentation of boys from disadvantaged and immigrant backgrounds. This research, therefore, investigates how an instrument designed for inclusion can paradoxically reinforce pre-existing social inequalities.

Adopting an intersectional framework based on the concept of “inequality regimes” (Acker, 2006), this study analyzes how schools’ categorizations of pupils and their families shape access to reasonable accommodations versus pathways into special education. The research unfolds in two qualitative phases. The first phase, consisting of 22 semi-structured interviews with primary school principals in Brussels, reveals that institutional presuppositions regarding families’ resources, reliability, and perceived “compatibility” with school norms are pivotal in how the legal framework is applied.

The second phase deepens this analysis through a multi-sited, multi-actor study in five socio-economically diverse schools. It combines detailed reconstructions of pupils' trajectories with in-depth interviews with both teachers and parents. This approach allows for a granular examination of how intersectional categorizations (class, race, gender, etc.) inform the concrete implementation of reasonable accommodations and how families perceive, negotiate, or contest the school’s decisions.

By focusing on the encounter between educational institutions and diverse family socializations, this paper demonstrates how an inclusive instrument can, in practice, transform social inequalities into educational ones. It also sheds light on the agency of families as they resist or partially reconfigure institutional expectations, offering a critical perspective on the complex realities of inclusive reform.

Educational inequalities related to migration have long been analysed through the bourdieusian lens of reproduction (Bourdieu and Passeron 1964, 1970). Children of migrants were considered working-class children. In fact, when controlling for socio-economic status, it was argued they outperformed their native peers (Vallet & Caille 1996). The latest PISA report (OCDE 2025) confirms this general trend at the level of OCDE average.

However, when disaggregated, this finding does not hold for all countries (OCDE 2025, Agirdag 2020). As argued by Ichou (2018), speaking of “foreigners” or “immigrants”, is essentializing and homogenizing practice, which conflates very different migratory trajectories and experiences. As such, he argues one must consider the premigratory status of families to grasp their subjective social position, which accounts better for their cultural capital. As such, Ichou shed light on the importance of migrant selectivity in educational inequalities.

Against this background, the absent research on the impact of precarious migratory statuses in Europe stands in contrasts with research on irregular latino/as in the US (Bernal-Areval et al. 2021). This gap constitutes a conspicuous epistemological blind spot in educational sociology considering how migration policies have become ever more restrictive, leading to a variety of precarious migratory statuses (de Haas, Natter & Vezzoli 2016).

This presentation aims to start filling this gap through a first, tentative, systematic review of the literature. Crossing a bourdieusian lens with migration studies, it first seeks to understand what the different experiences are of pupils with precarious migratory status (asylum seekers, undocumented, refugees), how this affects their socialisation, and how the school is blind for it and devalues it. It then asks, to what extent the school’s blindness for these different forms of socialisation potentially reproduces the border and as such acts an institution of border control. The conclusions are intended to guide future research.

Building on empirical findings from an extended ethnography of school-to-work transitions among working-class youth in Brussels (Belgium), this paper aims to develop an appropriate theoretical framework and methodology to advance the study of digital skills among lower-income youth and, more broadly, educational inequalities in the context of increasing digitalization in education.

Digital divides mirror wider patterns of social inequality. Access to hardware, information, services, and the development and possession of digital skills are linked to socioeconomic status and education levels (Plantard, 2016; DiMaggio et al., 2001; Vodoz, 2010). Research on the “second order digital divide” (Brotcorne 2019; Valenduc et al., 2010; DiMaggio et al., 2001) examines digital inequalities through the lens of the key knowledge and skills needed to use ICTs within mainstream institutions and roles. Digital literacy is connected to cultural capital, familiarity with written language, and argumentative skills (Auray, 2016; Pasquier, 2018; Grimault-Leprince & Décret-Rouillard, 2023; Harrache & Mell, 2024; Pacouret, Bastin & Marty, 2024). Less scholarly attention has been paid to how young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and other minorities develop their digital skills outside of school and formal settings, such as in areas disconnected from power. Some studies challenge this view by showing that digital practices do not differ significantly across social class or minority backgrounds, although their use within schools often conflicts with teachers’ expectations and perceptions (Rafalow, 2020). These perceptions help sustain processes of domination and legitimation within the school system.

This paper aims to contribute to this perspective by proposing theoretical and methodological adjustments to Bourdieusian theories. Bourdieu's theory is noteworthy for emphasizing, through the dialectics of affinities between, on one hand, the culture, categories, and judgments that shape the school field, and on the other hand, the culture of the dominant classes, how the legitimacy of practices of students from privileged backgrounds is reinforced. Conversely, his theory is less effective for illuminating how the value of cultural practices among young people from lower-class backgrounds is obscured by the school system and how their legitimacy is undermined in the job market. Indeed, Bourdieu’s theory presents a risk of “miserabilism” (Grignon and Passeron, 1989), which involves analyzing the symbolic worlds of dominated agents solely in relation to the dominant culture and the categories of the field of power and institutions, rather than from their own perspective. Therefore, to shed light on how educational inequalities are reinforced in the digital era—particularly regarding the digital practices of working-class and lower-class youth within the school field and their interactions with teachers’ judgments—we propose developing a Bourdieusian epistemological framework based on the concept of “subfield.” This concept refers to marginalized parts of the social space that still maintain a degree of autonomy. Although the idea of subfield and its autonomy are inherently relative, they help explore dominated symbolic universes and their digital practices before examining their relationship with legitimate culture as school culture.

Educational encounters between families and institutions are central sites where social inequalities are reproduced, negotiated, or contested. This is particularly visible in increasingly multilingual societies, where institutional expectations about languages and parental involvement often reflect the norms of socially dominant groups. Such norms, often rooted in language ideologies (Gal & Irvine, 2019), can generate or reinforce inequalities, especially when institutional expectations diverge from those of families from minoritized or marginalized backgrounds. Against this backdrop, this presentation focuses on a project investigating educational transitions from pre-primary to primary schools in South Tyrol (Italy).

First, the presentation will briefly outline the context of the study. South Tyrol is an officially trilingual border region, and its school system is organized into separate monolingual tracks corresponding to the three official languages, namely German, Italian, and Ladin. This structure, based on a mother-tongue principle (Statute of Autonomy, 1972), was designed to protect minorities and guarantee balanced representation and participation. However, this ethno-linguistic separation has been increasingly challenged by migration patterns (Wisthaler et al., 2022; Carlà, 2022; Rocha & Costa, 2021) and new forms of multilingualism, e.g., among individuals whose repertoires differ from those officially recognized. In this context, German represents the dominant group and is a prestigious language tied access to educational opportunities and upward social mobility.

Building on these premises, the study follows two multilingual families with migration trajectories from Morocco and Ethiopia as their children transition into, respectively, the Italian and German school systems. Indeed, this transition has been described as a key event in family’s lives (Huf, 2013; Turunen, 2014; Jose et al., 2022). In South Tyrol, the choice of primary school attracts sustained attention from both political institutions and the media (e.g., Liberto, 10 December 2025). As such, it is a particularly revealing site for exploring the ideological tensions that underpin the separation of education along ethnolinguistic lines.

Methodologically, multi-sited ethnography was employed (Marcus, 1995; Dick & Arnold, 2017) and the data consist of field notes, interview transcripts, and artefacts generated during participant observation. This approach allows us to understand transitions not as discrete events, but as dynamic, co‑constructed processes embedded in everyday practices, institutional expectations, and ideological landscapes which, alongside the family’s own linguistic practices and choices regarding children’s education, “form the mechanisms […] through which social inequalities are reproduced” (Curdt-Christiansen et al., 2023).

The study examines how language becomes salient in these moments, how families mobilize their funds of knowledge, and how institutional discourses frame parental involvement and appropriateness. The presentation will also exemplify on how families navigate the school system and, at the same time, grapple with intersecting processes of marginalization such as gender-based violence and housing precarity.

The transformative process towards inclusion and democracy that has reshaped school systems supports the pedagogical vision of the learning community, which is called upon to foster student development through the principle of shared educational responsibility (Conzemius & O’Neill, 2001). Within this perspective, schools are invited to adopt a democratic approach that extends their focus beyond the individual to include the family ecosystem enhancing collaboration among schools and families and strengthening the connection between these two social systems (Faure, 1972; Sanders & Epstein, 2005; Pavone, 2014; Di Michele, 2023). Scientific literature has extensively explored the positive effects of this partnership (Christenson, 2004; Pirchio et al., 2016) while also highlighting the persistence of marginalization processes affecting families whose characteristics do not correspond to standardized models (Lohmann, Hathcote & Hogan, 2018). Within this context, academic research has begun to investigate the challenges faced by parents with disabilities in participating in their children’s education (Robinson, Hickson & Strike, 2001; Stalker et al., 2011).
From the perspective of the Intersectionality Approach (Crenshaw, 1989) and Feminist Disabilities Studies (Wendell, 1989; Garland-Thomson, 2005) this contribution seeks to give voice to the experiences of school-based discrimination faced by families with these atypical structures, framing them as issues of social justice in education (Ayers, Quinn & Stovall, 2009). Specifically, it reflects on the interaction between mothers with disabilities and educational institutions, as well as the impact that such interactions may have on their children. The contribution presents the qualitative findings of a doctoral research project based on a mixed-methods design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018) which included 30 semi-structured interviews with mothers with disabilities. Themes emerged from the Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021) revealed barriers to mothers’ participation in school life that are not attributable to their impairments, but rather to institutional and cultural configurations that fail to recognize this form of parenting. Obstacles to accessing school spaces and communicating with teachers and other parents emerged, along with prejudices that undermine the recognition of mothers’ parental roles and capabilities.
These dynamics contribute to indirect discrimination against their children, who are often victims of bullying or exclusion, subjected to higher levels of teachers control, and involved in processes of adultification that position them as mediators in communication between school and family. At the same time the narratives reveal significant self-advocacy practices enacted by mothers with disabilities that redefine their role in school–family partnerships and strengthening more equitable forms of participation.
For an increasingly democratic school system, supporting the participation of mothers with disabilities is not a marginal concern but a critical test in preventing the translation of social inequalities into educational inequalities, and in pursuing new inclusive horizons grounded in an ecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Future research could explore children’s perspectives in greater depth and develop institutional guidelines for inclusive partnerships between schools and families that value the educational role of mothers with disabilities. With their collaboration virtuous alliances could be promoted that address invisible vulnerabilities and challenge discriminatory norms and exclusionary practices affecting both students and their parents.

The relationship between family expectations and student performance has long been a central question in the sociology of education. Reproduction theorists argue that educational institutions reproduce social inequalities by privileging the cultural codes of dominant classes, while families from lower social backgrounds progressively disengage from a system not built for them (Bianchi et al., 2025; Cabrera et al., 2019; Pérez et al., 2014). This paper examines how this disengagement unfolds longitudinally, focusing on inequalities in families' university expectations by parental education level and their relationship with reading performance throughout compulsory schooling.

We use longitudinal data from three standardised assessments —aligned with international large-scale assessment frameworks— conducted by the Canary Islands Agency for University Quality and Educational Evaluation on the same cohort in 2016, 2019 and 2023, when students were in 3rd, 6th and 10th grade. The assessments covered almost the full student census in the Canary Islands (Spain), with nearly 20,000 students per wave (n = 20,431; 19,855; and 18,522, respectively). We use sequential binomial logistic regression models to first estimate the probability that a family reports a defined expectation (vs. “don’t know”), and then, among those families, the probability of expecting university completion.

At 3rd grade, university expectations are high across all groups: 74% among families with lower secondary education or less, 86% among those with upper secondary, and 95% among university-educated families. By 10th grade, expectations among the lowest-educated families drop sharply to 48%, whilst they remain at 88% among university-educated families — a gap of 40 percentage points. Grade retention disproportionately affects students from lower-educated families and significantly reduces university expectations; crucially, there is a significant interaction whereby performance increasingly penalises these families over time, progressively eroding their connection to university expectations in ways not observed among higher-educated families.

These results show that lower-educated families do not begin with substantially lower aspirations, but declining performance trajectories and a higher risk of grade retention progressively signal that university is not a realistic destination for their children. The school does not merely reflect existing inequalities; it can contribute to amplifying them through institutional mechanisms and the progressive disengagement of families with lower cultural capital.

This study provides census-level longitudinal evidence on how the encounter between educational institutions and families from different social backgrounds contributes to the progressive fading of educational expectations. Inequalities emerge not from initial differences in aspirations, but from declining performance trajectories, grade retention, and the gradual disengagement of lower-educated families. Implications for equity-oriented policy and early intervention will be discussed.